Glubble

Glubble (www.glubble.com) seems to be the premier application/browser add-on for strictly controlling where children can access the web. It accomplishes this by the allowing only the sites you as the parent approve your child to view.

It literally creates a SHELL around the Firefox browser protecting your child to the degree that is necessary.

This method is preferable to the applications that "attempt" to BLOCK "bad" sites because the mission of the "bad" sites is to be deceptive and are always trying to find work-arounds to the existing blocks. It never ends and is unfortunately rather easy to do with computers.

Glubble is perfect for the children in our age bracket.

It will require you to run Firefox if you are not already.

I have downloaded the add-on and so far am happy with it's security measures. It can be a bit clunky with the requesting/approving but frankly that is it's absolute strength and requires you as the parent to be very involved.

Ian Hayward one of Glubble's founders

Today (Feb. 1,2007) is a very special day for me, a project I founded, today launched as a 1.0 final version.

Glubble Family Edition is a new parental control suite for Firefox. Its objective is to help extend the adoption of Firefox by providing an enhanced web experience for families of elementary school age children.

Parents and families are now protecting their youngsters online with Glubble for Firefox. We’ve had 40,000 families test drive the beta since the summer of 2007 and we’ve been actively sending out updates for a couple of weeks, initial Feedback is simply brilliant, check out the website to see some early testimonials from parents who are already using it every day.

Doing the best for our children and providing parental protection on the web is a super serious and passionate topic and Glubble just bats the problem clear out of the park. Parents are already going crazy for it and switching to Firefox in droves!

I have a simple call to action, Go tell all the families you know with loved ones of elementary school age please to ‘Get Firefox’ and install the Glubble Family Edition add-on for Firefox, its a whole new approach to parental control based on fun, collaboration and the family social network. There’s never been a better reason to get Firefox since Firefox!

My fellow Spread Firefox community members can read about this call to action on www.spreadfirefox.com/glubble

Get the Firefox web browser from Mozilla

Thank you in advance for helping promote Glubble for Firefox to young families.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Parents and family helpers have fun collectively deciding what their young ones can see online using a new personalization engine for Firefox that links family members browsing sessions and enables children to ‘ask a helper’ for permission to see new sites.

Written by Glaxstar ( a company I founded ) a true ‘Mozilla DNA’ company committed to helping the growth and adoption of Firefox by authoring many add-ons for many blue chip companies including, Nike, Google, Yahoo, del.icio.us and most recently the eBay companion for Firefox. Glaxstar continues to contribute at spreadfirefox.com to maintain the site, we have an engineer (Paul Booker) working almost full time on the site daily. We’ve done this constantly over the last two years because we passionately believe that Mozilla’s mission and Firefox’s purpose is very important for the future of a free and open web for all.

Other Reviews

• Finally I have come across something to write about that truly talks to my site motto “where technology and fatherhood collide.” It is not very often that I can write about a new service or piece of software that can help a family. Computers are now as common as TVs and now kids have computers in their rooms, at schools, at friends houses, at libraries, etc. I’m sure that someone will say, the best protection for your kids on surfing the Internet is direct supervision, and I wholeheartedly agree. However, this is a difficult task to consistently do, so sometimes we need to rely on other methods to reduce the risk. I, personally, wouldn’t want to have to watch over my children’s shoulders as they go though NickJr.com or PBSkids.org for hours upon hours. However, I WOULD want to monitor them if they had unfettered access to ANY site on the web. Thus, there is a need for tools to regulate what can be accessed. Read more at TechDadblog

• Since the beta launch last June the Glubble team have worked non-stop to create the 1.0 version. And if you detect a little touch of pride in my tone it’s because I think the new version is nothing short of an internet revolution.

  When Ian Hayward contacted me last April about doing some freelance stuff for Glaxstar he gave me an impassioned speech about how he had a vision about protecting young kids on the web. Well, not only has he done that - but Glubble also makes it easy for parents to give their kids some really cool content. Read more at roobottom.com

• The internet can be a crazy place for adults and even a dangerous place for kids. As more and more children are growing up with the internet as a part of their lives, parents are forced to deal with how let their children get online while still saying safe. Read more at Techcrunch.com